Ottawa Raceway Using Facial Recognition Technology
In May this year, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp started to introduce new technology in the form of facial recognition systems in the casinos across the province.
The OLG said that the aim of introducing this technology was to keep tabs on the estimated 300,000 players who are deemed "problem gamblers" in Ontario.
Recently, the Rideau Carleton Raceway started photographing visitors through the new technology, by digitally scanning the faces of players as they enter the casino. This makes it the 19th out of 27 casinos in the province to support this technology.
The system works in such a way that problem gamblers who sign up for a self exclusion list will be stopped by the casino's staff and will not be allowed to enter the establishment if their facial features match those on a unique list of problem gamblers.
If a person's name is not on the list of the self-excluded, his or her facial photo is immediately discarded.
Improvement on an Old Method
A similar system used to be in place, and the new facial recognition technology is an improvement of that system, according to the director of policy and social responsibility for the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp, Paul Pellizzari.
"It worked to some degree in the past, but, like anything, you want it to evolve and when you have technology that can help you, it's the better way to do things," he said.
Pellizzari said that the OLG developed custom algorithms that biometrically encrypt the facial data that it has in its system.
"We took what the industry standard was for encryption and we enhanced it and did a number of other things to make hard to hack into," he explained, adding that even if it was hacked into, authorized people would not be able to access the data.
